I mourn for the men and boys we never knew.
How many were there, throughout all of human history? Thousands? Millions? Billions, even? How many little boys were forced into femininity, married off and grew into “women” without ever knowing why it all felt so wrong? How many men never got the chance to cut their hair, to wear their husband or father’s clothes, to do anything to explore their mind and body under the constant oppressive force of the (cis)patriarchy? How many couldn’t live on their own, couldn’t go to school, couldn’t even go outside without supervision? How many never knew themselves, never were given the chance to know themselves, because they were kept as a housemaid and servant to their husband and children?
How many were there, that did know? That knew they weren’t women, that knew they were men but had no way to explore or externalize that desire. No freedom to find community, no privacy in their homes, no money or possessions not approved by the cis men in their lives. For the few who were brave and lucky enough to try but were caught, the result was what we see now: erasure. Labelled as “tomboys” and mentally ill, to this day still called women because their voice was never heard. Never was allowed to be heard. Even for the even fewer who did, or even got away with it, in the end the same result occurs. Arguments over their identity, refusal to believe their word over what others wanted them to be. A woman. And those were the tiny, lucky few. For the rest…
How many men were institutionalized? How many mutilated, raped and murdered for refusing to follow their imposed societal role? How many died by the hands of the government, their community, their own loved ones, for the crime of who they were? No money or connections to fall back on, treated as a defective object rather than a failed person. Buried in clothes they hated, eulogized with names that burned on their tongue and quietly, routinely erased.
People think of all of these things as women’s issues, but they’re wrong. They’ve happened to men (and non-women), too. They have been happening, for as long as the concept of gender has existed in the first place. Men who were silenced, men who were invisible, men who never even got to feel in their hearts what they actually were. The trans community is haunted by their ghosts, invisible as they were in life. I wish we could see them.
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